Gone are the days when employees leave a company and are never heard from again. People share experiences on Glassdoor and LinkedIn. Also, an employee may come back, turn into a contractor, or even become a client. Departing employees now have power and today’s leading edge companies are asking, “How can we create a win-win departure?”

First impressions with your company matter, both for your new hire and what they’ll share about your employment brand. A formal onboarding programs provides a big impact, which is why they are one of today’s hottest trends.

Onboarding solutions integrate with recruiting solutions so the transition from candidate to employee is effortless. They also integrate with performance and learning solutions so employees can start focusing on their future with the organization. Best of all, they are customizable so the company brand remains front and center.

Onboarding takes enthusiastic new hires and rapidly engages and connects them to the life of the organization. That engagement leads to employee commitment, and their commitment leads to accomplishment.

Offboarding is the strategic process for transitioning employees out of an organization, and unlike onboarding, it is often ignored. According to an Aberdeen report published last year, only 29 percent of organizations have an offboarding program in place.

For decades, learning in a corporate environment consisted of a day or a week of classroom-based training. However, technological advances delivered on the promise of a more complex learning protocol with automated, virtual, and experiential elements. At Connections 2014, SilkRoad’s annual user conference, a panel of learning professionals convened to discuss five major learning themes this year, including integration, mobility, engagement, compliance, and analytics.

It is hard to fault the idea that appraisal reveals an employee’s abilities and a development plan should follow naturally from that. The smooth link looks good on paper. The reality is a good deal messier. It is not that HR is doing something wrong, just that the process is harder than it looks. Understanding why it is hard will lead to better results.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) allow companies to focus on the right component of the learning process – and that is the learning. Administrative activities like registering for training or recording training completion are automated. Required compliance programs can be delivered online, reducing costs. Managers can share training feedback that supports the company’s business goals.

Performance appraisal reveals employee abilities. A development plan should follow naturally from that. The process, especially for SMBs or fast-growth companies, can be especially challenging. Understanding those challenges will lead to better results.

Five years ago, many HR representatives put their hands over their ears and pretended they’d never heard the words “social media.” However, social media – which encompasses any internal or external online outlet that allows for two-way dialogue and includes websites such as blogs, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, Yelp, and YouTube – has only become more pervasive. In fact, according to Laura Friedel, a partner in Levenfeld Pearlstein’s Labor and Employment Practice Group, 75 percent of employees currently access social media on their mobile devices while at work and 67 percent do so more than twice a day.

In a recent survey of CEOs by the consulting firm PWC, over half of the executives surveyed said, “lack of talent meant they either cancelled/delayed a strategic initiative, were unable to pursue a market opportunity, or could not innovate effectively.” A talent audit can help your organization avoid those issues and ensure that you have the right talents in the right places at the right times. Today and tomorrow.

Most new hires have already bought into your company story and they want to take part. Onboarding takes these enthusiastic new people and rapidly engages and connects them to the life of the organization. That engagement leads to employee commitment. And their commitment leads to accomplishment. Download to learn more!

In this how-to guide we lay out the key tactics for getting non-HR leaders to support HR’s talent management agenda. We outline five big principles of persuasion followed by five big tactics specific to communicating the value of strategic talent management.